Ed Snyder began this blog in order to share his decade-long experience with all things cemeterial. As a photographer specializing in images of cemetery statuary, I've run into some interesting people, had some unexplainable experiences, and had a lot of fun.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Stealing from the Dead

On December 18, 2013, thieves stole two 250-pound bronze
mausoleum doors from Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania (a
Philadelphia suburb). The replacement value of the doors is about $30,000. This
was their second trip to Arlington – they had stolen more doors the prior weekend, assuming
the same thieves. (Links at the end of this article will take you to the news postings
and videos regarding the story.)

What would anyone want with heavy bronze doors? Might they
need replacements for the antechamber doors in their castle? Would they sell
them on the black art market? Hardly. Most likely they would attempt to sell
them for scrap. At current rates for bronze scrap ($2.00 per pound), the doors
would fetch a thousand dollars (500 lbs. x $2.00 per pound). Bronze, being an
alloy of copper and tin, is worth almost as much as copper (click link for current prices),
the “gold” of the scrap metal industry.

But there’s a catch – and that is, quite literally, that the
thieves or the scrap yard could be caught. Selling scrap is not so easy if the
booty is recognizable. So if the thieves thought that it was hard enough to
remove the pair of 250-pound doors from the mausoleum, lug them across a
snow-covered cemetery, over a fence, and into a waiting vehicle – wait until
they try to chop them up. That can’t be easy.

Blocked-up mausoleum entrance

And if they pound or cut them into unrecognizable chunks,
they’ll have to cart it all off to a scrapyard and try to pass it off as
(relatively) worthless – and not stolen – junk. One trick my father taught me
(as he would sometimes sell a truckload of scrap metal to the junkyard) is that
if you mix the questionable stuff up with the REALLY worthless stuff, it’s more
difficult to detect the former. Not that he stole from cemeteries, of course.
When one person tosses an old refrigerator or a roll of copper wire in the
trash, there are scrappers who pick it out and sell it to a metal recycling operation
(or, as they were called when I was a kid in the 1960s, a “junk yard”). Recycling
scrap metals means extra cash for some people. Today, with a poor economy and
scrap metal values as high as they are, THEFT of metals to be sold as scrap is
rampant.

The problem
of metal theft is ever present, but it has boomed in recent months.

The rash of scrap thefts has put recyclers
in a difficult position. Many find themselves trying to maintain their incoming
supply while guarding against accepting stolen material.

"Unfortunately, with most scrap
metal, there's just no way to tell the difference between legitimate scrap and
that which has been stolen -- it all looks the same,” said Chuck Carr, spokesman
for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). "Recyclers are
also confronted with the challenge of protecting their own inventory
from theft, both at their facilities and in transit to their customers."

To meet these challenges, recyclers are
engaging in cooperative crime-fighting efforts with other recyclers and law
enforcement officials.

In general, scrap recyclers must address
scrap thefts on two fronts: First, they must protect themselves from having
their own material stolen. And second,
they must protect themselves from inadvertently buying stolen material over the
scale.

Recyclers are taking steps to identify
incoming stolen material and avoid purchasing it. Scrap operators know it's
illegal to intentionally purchase stolen material. They also recognize the
potential out-of-pocket losses they may suffer by unwittingly buying such
material. If the material's rightful owner or local authorities find the stolen
goods in a recycler's yard, they can reclaim it without having to reimburse the
recycler.

Mausoleum with blocked-up front door (Wilmington, Delaware)

Doorless mausoleum

So how did the thieves get the doors off the mausoleums,
anyway? They pried them open (where the two doors meet in the center) and then
removed the side hinges from each door. Arlington has now chained the door
handles together on its remaining eighteen mausoleums to prevent future theft.
Attractive sight, isn’t it? I’ve seen this a lot, in many cemeteries, and just
assumed it was done to prevent unauthorized entry. I’ve also seen mausoleums
with the doors missing altogether.
and many with the window and door openings blocked up. All a result of theft, I
imagine.

And what about the families who own the mausoleums? Does a
cemetery insure itself against such theft? Do the families who own the
mausoleums insure the building? Arlington Cemetery is home to the Museum of
Mourning Arts, a wonderful museum of Victorian funerary art. I hope the
building has an electronic security system. The cemetery itself is immaculate, a
genteel purlieu in a residential neighborhood, fronted by busy Lansdowne
Avenue. Its wooded acres are very well-maintained, though such bucolic forested
landscaping offers convenient cover for thieves. Hard to believe such a theft
could occur here, and no one see the theft in process. If anyone reading this
has any information about the doors, please call Upper Darby Police's anonymous
tip line at 610-734-3439.

Even more difficult to believe is that a similar theft
occurred earlier at nearby Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pa, four miles from
Arlington. Three sets of doors were stolen from this Catholic Archdiocese
cemetery. It has many more mausoleums to choose from and is a larger cemetery,
making it potentially easier to perpetrate such a crime. Holy Cross is one of
my favorite cemeteries in which to make photographic art, so the desecration is
even closer to home. The image of the Christmas wreath on the mausoleum door
that you see at the beginning of this blog was made in Holy Cross a few years
ago. I’m wondering if the doors are still there.

Nothing is safe when people are hard up for money, perhaps money
to feed a drug habit, as police suspect in the Arlington thefts. The bronze medallions
(see photo at left) that mark veterans’ graves in many cemeteries are easy pickings, certainly
easier than a mausoleum door. They go missing all the time (see link). Though I never
weighed one, I assume each weighs a pound. Fifty of these at $2.00 apiece would
fetch one hundred dollars as scrap. You can buy a gram of heroin with that. (My
mathematically-inclined readers have already done the math and see that the
value of heroin is TWICE that of gold!)

Ed Snyder with "Silent Sentinel" (photo Frank Rausch)

Cemeteries need a silent sentinel to keep theft down these
days. This particular bronze sculpture of a Civil War soldier, coincidentally known as the
“Silent Sentinel,” used to stand in Philadelphia’s Mount Moriah Cemetery. In the
1970s, it was recovered while thieves were in the act of removing it. It had been
knocked off its granite pedestal, chained to a pickup truck and was being
dragged out of the cemetery. The theft was thwarted and the statue was placed
in storage for safekeeping. The “Silent Sentinel” was restored and kept in a
foundry for safekeeping for forty years. Not until 2013 did it see the light of
day. It now stands (temporarily) in the office at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill
Cemetery.

5 comments:

Gods you are not even safe from thieves when you are dead, and not really for enough money for one day's drug habit. A friend who works in home health told me the story of a grandma who had put $1K in total in gift cards for her grandchildren under the Christmas tree, and one of the aids in the agency stole it. How low can people go, especially at the holidays. I would like to reblog this and use one of your pictures above the link, and maybe a short quote from the beginning, with your name under the pic as copyright if that is ok with you. Lee leeshawnus@embarqmail.com